Evaluating Pedestrians’ Safety on Urban Intersections: A Visibility Analysis

Keila González-Gómez and María Castro
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Keila González-Gómez: Departamento de Ingeniería del Transporte, Territorio y Urbanismo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
María Castro: Departamento de Ingeniería del Transporte, Territorio y Urbanismo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-16

Abstract: Overall visibility plays a key role in the safety of pedestrians. Despite its importance, verifying the right provisioning of sufficient available sight distances among pedestrians and vulnerable road users (VRUs) is not a prevalent practice. On top of that, the pursuit for more sustainable modes of transportation has promoted the establishment of different shared mobility services which are prone to increase walking and, thus, the number of pedestrians and other VRUs in urban settings. With the intention of verifying how car-centered designs perform for non-motorized users, a 3D procedure that evaluates the visibility of pedestrians and other users is presented and applied to specific cases in Madrid, Spain. The proposed solution employs virtual trajectories of pedestrians with mobility impairments and without them, cyclists, and personal transportation device riders. Their visibility was assessed around the functional area of urban intersections, including zones where possible jaywalking practices might occur. The evaluation was performed three-dimensionally, making use of LiDAR data, GIS tools, and 3D objects. Results show the impact of street furniture location on visibility, the distinctive influence of vegetation on the lines of sight of each observer, and how design parameters that were intended to improve motorized traffic could affect VRU.

Keywords: vulnerable road users; urban intersections; sight distance; road safety; LiDAR models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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